Jean-Baptiste Badon, a junior playing his first semester as a member of the University of Arkansas men's tennis team, says he is not the same person today that he was when he arrived on campus New Year's Day in Fayetteville.
That's because just one week into his tenure as a Razorback, the most damaging wildfires in the history of Southern California forced his family to evacuate and burned down or severely damaged many sites he grew up in around Altadena and the Pacific Palisades — including his church, his aunt's house and the tennis complex owned by his mother, which Badon considers his second home.